


Of Cats and Coats

by christinefromsherwood



Series: Stories from the Horrid Name Bond!verse [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: But also adorable, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, James Bond Being James Bond, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Q has a kitten and a lot of feels, SPECTRE Fix-It, Unresolved Sexual Tension, probably unresolved romantic tension applies as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 14:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18704056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinefromsherwood/pseuds/christinefromsherwood
Summary: You wouldn't think that horrid October weather, a lost kitten and a Burberry coat could combine to make Q this hot and bothered, would you?And yet, that is exactly what happens in thisprequeltoOf Smiles and Names.





	Of Cats and Coats

**Author's Note:**

> takes place several months before the events of _Of Smiles and Names_
> 
> Enjoy!

Thankfully, the black kitten wasn’t shaking any more when they’d arrived in the underground lab of MI6. Q had wrapped it into the wool of his scarf and his zipped up jacket and curled his body around it as much as he could on the Tube and then outside in the sleeting weather.

“Mr. Pierson!” he called out over his shoulder, even as he tried to take out the keys from his pocket and type in the security code to the door one-handed. The only reply he got, however, was a pitiful little meowl.

“I know, sweetheart, I know,” he soothed hurriedly and then called again: “Mr. PIERSON!”

It was Pierson, who was supposed to have the night shift tonight, Q was sure of it. He was supposed to be on-call for any agents returning from a mission for an initial debrief with their equipment. If Q found out that he had traded shifts with Hadia again, he’d reassign him to the archive for six months!

See, how he liked reading through and digitalizing and filing all those ludicrous AA reports, phone transcripts and requisition forms from the seventies. See, how he liked it when someone in a position of power made him do something unfair simply because he could!

“Ms Almasi!” he called out instead, making sure to keep all of his irritation out of his voice. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but she really did need to start standing up for herself, or at least come to him, as he had repeatedly asked her to.

“Ms Almasi, I could really use a hand here!” he continued as he finally pushed his way through the door to his office and switched on the lights. It was blessedly warmer here than out there in the garage.

Q knew very well why he had put his foot down when Bill tried to talk him into placing the MI6 servers into Q-branch offices along with the personnel. Yes, it would have saved on space after the Silva debacle, but did the world really need to deal with a bunch of permanently irate hackers with stuffy noses because of the cold draft from the server fans?

Q took off his jacket, careful not to dislodge the bundle of purring fluff from its hot confines for longer than was necessary. The kitten’s eyes were closed and Q hoped that meant it was sleeping peacefully. Poor thing! It must have been exhausted. Who knew how long it had been left wandering in the sleet?! It was bloody cold for the first week of October.

Finally, there was the sound of footsteps and Q breathed out a sigh of relief: “Thank God!”

He slowly placed the jacket on a handful of discarded folders on the floor near the ancient radiator and relaxed his back into a more dignified position than a hunched crouch.

“Hadia, before you go home, I’d really appreciate it if you stayed here for a bit, so I could nip out-”

“Not Ms Almasi, Q, but for a gorgeous sight like that, I’m yours to command,” came from behind him, and Q straightened so fast, he could hear his back crack. He didn’t need the initial proclamation to know perfectly well, that those tones distinctly did not belong to Hadia.

“007!” he yelped out. “What do you mea-? What are you doing here?”

“Calm down, Q, I meant that lovely lady down there,” Bond said with a perfectly straight face, a twinkle in his eyes and a nod to the floor. He might as well have winked and Q felt the heat from the proximity to the radiator rise up his neck and cheeks. “And I woke up early, decided to go for a run and then wondered if you might need another round of testing for your mods on the new Beretta…”

Q threw him a suspicious look, before he bent down to his desk to rummage through the drawers for some sort of kitten-friendly sustenance. He really didn’t fancy going out there again to chase down an open convenience store that carried all the necessary accoutrement for a very small kitten in a very sensitive workplace. And he sincerely doubted that even a hardened field agent like Bond had looked out of his window that morning and felt an overwhelming need to exercise outside. Especially, since he was off-duty recuperating after a bout with a lengthy poison-induced fever.

Q fought a shiver that always ran down his spine when he thought back to when they had almost lost Bond, to those German hospital transcripts and he reminded himself to check later that Drs Überhauser and Schwann were, indeed, following the conditions of their NDAs to the letter. If not, well… Q was sure that he could bring about both M and 006 to the necessity of a trigger being pulled in their case. Although, he doubted he’d need to try very hard with Trevelyan.

“Where’s Ms Almasi?” he asked to distract himself and Bond from the darker path his thoughts had taken.

“She was asleep on her feet when I got here, so I sent her home,” Bond answered and bent down to look closer at the kitten, before looking up at Q with a slight frown. “I know I call them your minions, Q, but…”

Q ignored him, as he tapped in the security codes to the personnel files on his mobile.

“And that will be six-, no, nine months in the archives for Mr Pierson!” he announced cheerfully and pocketed his phone again.  “I wonder what it was this time, a blinding headache, or an ailing pet. You’d think he runs an animal hospital with the number of times he’d used that excuse.”

“Ah,” Bond murmured and turned to the kitten again. With slow, careful movements he stretched out one calloused finger and ran it gently down the kitten’s side.

Q bit his lip.

“I found it shivering under the stairs at Oxford Circus,” he said. “And I couldn’t very well leave it there.”

“It? Q, this is a lady!” said Bond in a tone of clear admonishment before stroking the black fur again.

“Well, I’m not sure you can really tell at this age,“ Q croaked out, but stopped himself from further justifications when he saw that the agent wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead, 007 was grinning delightedly at a pair of large green eyes that opened in the middle of the tiny face, and blinked sleepily before the kitten opened its mouth in a jaw-breaking yawn, swallowed a couple of times and then went back to sleep with the tip of its pink tongue peeking out.

“Right.” Bond straightened decisively and took a step back. His eyes kept sliding to the floor, though. “What do you need me to get, Quartermaster?”

Q shook his head.

“No, no, I’ll go,” he said resolutely.

Bond was watching the kitten flex its paws and then tuck them back into the scarf. There was nothing for it. No choice. Q’d have to brave the elements outside.

“I just needed someone to stay here and guard the office from the kitten, and the kitten from the office. And who better than a field agent of your seniority?”

He supressed a grin at the look Bond threw him, and raised his hands up, palms out.

“I meant that in the sense of ‘superior experience’, honest!”

“I’m sure you did, Quartermaster.”

Q turned to the coat hanger to put on his jacket and leave, and then stopped when he saw that it was empty and realised his predicament. He didn’t have a jacket to put on, because it was currently being occupied by the sleeping kitten. The same went for his scarf.

Q scrunched up his forehead as he weighed his options of going into the sleet in just his cardigan or rummaging through the storage for something from the discontinued line of those hideous faux-leather coats. His predecessor had experimented with bullet-proof fabrics, as well as exploding pens. His successes in the field of innovative body armour were by and large rather underwhelming.

Suddenly, he was enveloped in a spicy, warm embrace as something heavy and heavenly dropped onto his shoulders. Q buried his fingers in the folds of the wool-cashmere blend of Bond’s Burberry and tried not whimper, or—God forbid—purr.

“You need to wrap up warm, Q,” Bond’s voice rumbled in his ear. Q felt its vibrations send heat down the back of his neck straight to the tips of his toes and fought a shudder. “We can’t have the youngest Quartermaster of MI6 catching his death out in the cold now, can we?”

Q cleared his throat of the strangled screech that tried to fight its way through, stepped away from the solid (warm, delectable) body behind him and slipped his arms into the sleeves of Bond’s coat.

“Much appreciated, 007,” he said with a sharp nod and made towards the door. He made sure to keep his eyes from lingering on the contours of Bond's beige turtle-neck and dark trousers. They were of the extremely sightly kind.

“Be back in a jiffy,” he added. Then at the door to his office, a sudden idea stopped him and he turned: “There’s a stack of 003’s old AARs in that cupboard, in case she wakes up and… needs the facilities.”

Outside, Q hardly felt the harsh wind, wrapped up as he was in the thick scent of Bond’s coat and the warmth of the surprised smile in his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the promised new installment in the series! I hope you liked it :) 
> 
> _Regarding SPECTRE:_ In my head, it doesn't exist. Don't get me wrong, there were some nice moments/action/scenes. But overall, the plot of that movie in unimaginably stupid. However, scioscribe's [Dramatic Arts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5324195) and Rosslyn's [just like old times (please don't ever change)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5295506) have done much to soothe my soul after that movie. Anyway, I decided that in this version of the Bond!verse the events of SPECTRE didn't really happen and were merely a poison-induced hallucination. If you think about it, the movie makes much more sense if you consider the plot a fever dream (or a botched fake mission report ;) ), rather than a serious, logical progression of events. 
> 
> I mean, an assassin status ring infested with the DNA of every Craig!Bond villain?! HYDRA-esque organization that convenes in Rome after every death of their assassins and is led by Bond's evil long lost step-brother at the root of it all?! Secret hotel rooms within secret hotel rooms that only a master assassin's nubile daughter holds the key to?! and the villain's master stroke is supposed to be an evil device that steals Bond's facial recognition skills?! REALLY?!  
> Why not add a mysterious birthmark, a secret twin and a pseudo-incestual love affair misunderstanding since we're apparently in a 19th century melodrama? 
> 
>  The reference to 003's AA reports will probably make more sense once I write out a bit more of my headcanon for this verse :D :D 
> 
> **All feedback, comments AND/OR suggestions and prompts for further installments will be welcome and much appreciated.**  
>  _I'd also really like it if you'd come and chat with me about the beauty that is 00Q on[Tumblr.](https://christinefromsherwood.tumblr.com/about) (♪'cause I am all alone. There is no one here beside me.♫)_


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